Hikes around Mont Blanc

The most scenic hikes on the Mont Blanc massif, from Val Ferret and Val Veny in Italy to the Glacier d'Orny in Switzerland.

Mont Blanc is best seen from a distance, and that is what these hikes do: they climb the grassy ridges that face the massif, such as the Testa della Tronche above the Rifugio Bertone or Monte Fortin above Val Veny, or they reach one of its side glaciers, such as the Glacier d'Orny on the Swiss side.

They are grade E hikes, with elevation gains of around a thousand metres, and they are at their best under a clear sky, because the reason to do them is the view of the mountain's face.

Good to know about Mont Blanc

By convention, the history of mountaineering begins on this very face: the first ascent of Mont Blanc dates from 8 August 1786, when Jacques Balmat, a chamois hunter and crystal seeker, and the doctor Michel-Gabriel Paccard, both from Chamonix, reached the summit. Balmat collected the prize that the Genevan scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure had offered years earlier to whoever reached the top, and for a long time claimed most of the credit; historians have since reassessed Paccard's part. The following year Saussure himself made the ascent, with a large expedition.

From Monte Fortin you look down on the Miage Glacier, the largest black glacier in the Italian Alps, meaning one covered in rock debris, more than ten kilometres long and the only one in Italy with a forest grown on its lower tongues. The debris slows the melting but does not stop it: according to Legambiente, the surface of the frontal sector has dropped by about thirty metres since the 1990s. On the glacier, as on the Orny, you walk only with mountaineering equipment and skills, and even from the path it is wise not to linger beneath ice fronts and seracs, which collapse unpredictably, above all on hot days.